What is a brown dwarf? Answer: In order to understand what is a brown dwarf, we need to understand the difference between a star and a planet. It is not easy to tell a star from a planet …

The brown dwarf, called Gliese 229B (GL229B), is a small companion to a cool, red star called Gliese 229. This binary star system is located 19 light-years from Earth. GL229B is estimated …

The Planets and Dwarf Planets. A planet is a large space body which reflects the light of a star around which it revolves. The planets in our solar system are classified as inner planets and …

It takes 310 Earth years for this dwarf planet to make one orbit around the Sun. Makemake was first observed in 2005 by a team of astronomers led by Michael Brown. Its codename was …

Eris, the largest known dwarf planet, was first detected in data collected in October of 2003. It was not identified until January of 2005. Mike Brown and his team of astronomers discovered what …

This is the first step in the evolution of a star. The glowing protostar continues to accumulate mass. The amount of mass it can accumulate is determined by the amount of matter available …

Eris is the largest known dwarf planet in our solar system. It is a little larger than Pluto. Eris is about 2400 kilometers wide. Eris was first found by a team of astronomers at Palomar …

Pluto was re-classified as a dwarf planet in August 2006. Until the fly-by of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft in 2015, little was known about Pluto. It was believed to be composed of rock and ice.

It also reflects that star's light. Eight planets have been discovered in our solar system. Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are the planets closest to the Sun.

Haumea was first discovered in 2004. It was accepted as one of our dwarf planets by the International Astronomical Union in 2008. Before being officially named, it was called Santa by …